“A Masterpiece Could Be Made of a Dish of Turnips” – Sherwood Anderson

American novelist Sherwood Anderson gave his young son some timely advice about creativity that is well worth sharing today. His whole quote goes as follows:

“Go to the Louvre often and spend a good deal of time before the Rembrandts, the Delacroixs. Learn to draw. Try to make your hand so unconsciously adept that it will put down what you feel without your having to think with your hands. Then you can think of the thing before you. Draw things that have some meaning to you. An apple, what does it mean? The object drawn doesn’t matter so much. It’s what you feel about it, what it means to you. A masterpiece could be made of a dish of turnips. Draw, draw, hundreds of drawings. Try to remain humble. Smartness kills everything. The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.”

This quote captures for me the “why” of photography, and also the “why” of blogging. Both represent a creative release for me each weekend. Both have kept me from missing home and family, allowing me to focus on making the most of my home, wherever it may be. They save me.

So today I thought I would share with you some of the tools of my weekend blogging trade. I took the way-too-arty photo of my desktop yesterday, in between innings of “meaningful September baseball”, as I stayed home on a typical adventure Saturday to watch my beloved Bluejays sweep a double-header with the arch rival Yankees. A Saturday off from adventure gave me time to reflect on my blogging process, with the hope that next weekend I will be inspired to travel further afield in search of a worthy adventure to share with you.

First off, you will see that I have traded in my trusty Canon 7D for a lighter, equally powerful but so much lighter Fuji X100T. While I loved the quality of the photos I got from my long time Canon companion, the mirrorless photography world has finally caught up with my desire to travel light and often. I have not been disappointed! You will also see my other trusted sidekick, my MacBook Pro. It is a work horse for photo editing and a joy to use each and every time I flip open that iconic silver lid. Glasses! I am blind as a bat. Always have been. And now that I see equally poorly at a distance and close-up, bifocals are a necessity. Sigh. Lastly, notebooks are important for gathering both blog post ideas, and planning trips that may tell a compelling story. Not shown in this photo is my iPhone 6+ as I needed a camera to take this shot :). My phone is an excellent camera and an appreciated GPS while adventuring.

As many of you know, I spent much of last year in gorgeous southern Alberta for work. Knowing that my stay would be short, I spent each weekend on a dedicated photo adventure to a different place, sharing my awesome Alberta adventures here with you. Now that I have made a permanent move to beautiful British Columbia, I hope to continue this tradition of weekend travel adventures. There is so much to see and do here! I have gathered day trip ideas in my notebooks above, thanks to a variety of helpful websites that celebrate all there is to see and do in the Greater Vancouver Area. Sites like Vancouver Is Awesome, Vancity Buzz and Hello BC provide inspirational travel prompts daily that I file away for my weekends. I also draw lots of inspiration from Instagram. I follow a tonne of folks, both “Rembrandts” and regular photo geeks like you and me, who share their love of the food, festivals, neighbourhoods and awe-inspiring nature here in BC. By the time the weekend hits, I am usually ready to hit the road or hop on the Skytrain for a day filled with adventure that celebrates how lucky we are to be walking this earth. It is time to start taking pictures again. Even if it is of a dish of turnips! Well, not just a dish of turnips 🙂